Then Florian knew the Vision of Beauty was a catch not to be despised by a man of culture. Such wealth as that, no gentleman could decline, in justice to himself, if she gave him the refusal of it.
CHAPTER XII
THE MADDING CROWD
Andreas Hausberger was a dictator. He kept his own counsel till the moment of action grew ripe for birth in the womb of time; then, heeding no man, he gave his orders. Three days after Will Deverill’s departure from St Valentin, he called up Linnet to his office suddenly. “The dressmaker has brought home your new costume,” he said in his curt way. “Go upstairs and put it on. Then come down and let me see you.”
Linnet, much wondering what this mood might portend, went up to her own room and tried on her new gew-gaws. Puffed white sleeves, laced corset, crimson kirtle, high shoes, flowered kerchief at her bosom, silver dirk in her hair; Linnet wasn’t over-vain, as girls go in this world, but tricked out in such finery, she gazed in her glass, and, to tell the whole truth, admired herself consumedly. If only her Englishman could have seen her in that dress! But she stifled her sigh, and tripped lightly downstairs again, with the buoyancy of youth, when conscious of a perfectly becoming costume, for Andreas Hausberger’s scrutiny.
The wirth scanned her, well satisfied. “On Monday,” he said, briefly, in that iron voice, “we set out on our tour, and go first to Innsbruck.”
It was earlier by a week than he at first intended; but he saw it would be hard, if he stopped at St Valentin, to keep Fridolin’s hands from Franz’s throat much longer. So, by way of minimising the adverse chances, he made up his mind to start as soon as possible for his winter season. He meant to begin modestly with entertainments at hotels among the Tyrolese winter resorts, and the towns of the Riviera; and then, when his troupe had got over its first access of stage fright, and grown used to an audience, to go across for the summer to England or America.
So, for the next few days Linnet was busy as a bee with preparations for her first journey into the great wide world outside the Zillerthal. As yet, her native valley had bounded her view—she had never gone even as far as Jenbach. Expectation and preparation kept her mind well employed during that busy week, and prevented it from dwelling too much or too long on the kindly Engländer, who had vanished from her ken across the sea to England. For, that he had gone straight home, Linnet never even doubted. On the afternoon of Andreas Hausberger’s exciting announcement, indeed, a little registered parcel came by post for her to St Valentin. It bore the postmark of Wilten, where Will had intentionally dropped it into the letter-box, on purpose to conceal from her his exact whereabouts. Linnet scanned it close, and read the name correctly, but was too innocent of the topography of her native country to know that Wilten is the name of a village on the outskirts of Innsbruck. When she asked Andreas Hausberger where Wilten was, a little later in the day, without showing him the postmark, he confirmed her belief by answering at once that ’twas a town in England, not far from Salisbury. So he had thought of her over sea, then, and sent her this beautiful costly present from his own country. She tried it on that night before her tiny square mirror. As Will had rightly judged, it set off the rich tints of her creamy brown neck to the best advantage.
A beautiful gift! A real lady might have worn it! Later on, when Linnet had diamonds and rubies at command, there was no trinket she prized among all her jewels like Will Deverill’s coral.